2023-07-28 07:01:00
Our series “Paris 2024 Olympics: the Games in their eyes”
In a year, Paris and France will set Olympic time and vibrate with the exploits of tricolor athletes. On this occasion, and to measure how much the Games can change lives, we chose 6 iconic Olympic champions and took them to the site of their events in Paris. To talk regarding them, the Olympics and what awaits the Blues and the French from July 26, 2024. For six intimate and exceptional interviews.
Meet on the Alexandre-III bridge. Because of the works, it is indeed impossible to organize a photo session under the glass roof of the Grand Palais which, next year, will host the fencing events of the Paris Olympic Games. So it will be outside. Under the sun and with a smile. Because Laura Flessel lends herself greedily to the photo shoot and then with pleasure to the game of questions and answers.
Fencing, the Games, those of Atlanta who made her queen and all the others, Paris 2024, life… the “Wasp” has so much to say! Without ever losing her good mood, even to evoke the racism of which she was the victim in sport. Because if she sometimes had to fight more than others, she “succeeded in her lives”.
How did your love affair with fencing begin?
LAURA FLESSEL. My father, who left 3 months ago, was a football player, player-coach and meteorologist. He was always thinking double or triple plans. My mother, who was in education, encouraged us to play sports. She had two boys and two girls. One day, she said, “The boys will go to football with their father and the girls will dance in pink tutu”. For me, it was impossible. As luck would have it, that same evening on TV, I saw fencing and saber. For me, who had a tomboy side, it was love at first sight. Two people in white clothes who clashed, I loved it. The next day, my mother inquired and I went to a fencing room in Petit-Bourg (Guadeloupe). It was a party hall, the tracks were marked off with tape. Joël Templier, who will be my coach until I turn 18, told me that I said: “Hello, my name is Laura and I want to be world champion”. It seems that my eyes were wide open. It was a room in which there was nothing, just cries, laughter, sharing. There was a soul. At the end of the session, I was exhausted, happy and my mother said to me: “You will stay in fencing”.
“My parents had to borrow for me to succeed. Even my brothers and sister sometimes gave me their pocket money so that I might travel. »
Laure Flessel
When did you realize that fencing was going to be your life?
I was bulimic for life. But I never partied too much, I never had to be restricted in order for me to succeed in sport and progress in fencing. I quickly realized that winning was not reserved for others. At 14, I was upgraded, I left to compete in the Caribbean. I participated in the Pan American Games and I heard the Marseillaise before being champion of France. At no time did I feel like I was making sacrifices. I was educated for this. I never went to training backwards, even at 40 in my senior year. What interested me was the competition. Competition in all its forms, physical, technical, mental. I loved everything. Especially those few seconds of pleasure that victory gives.
And your parents have always accompanied you on this path?
Support is the word. My father was always there to give us solutions, answers. My mother was omnipresent in my life. We are fusion. But she didn’t stay in the gymnasiums, she put me down, she went to mass on Sundays, she went to the market and bought fruit and she came back to the gym to give it to me. She said to me: “When you finish, you call me from the phone booth, I’ll come back to get you. She remained very imbued in my success. I was an island, the plane tickets, my parents paid, it was expensive. After the Atlanta Games in 1996 (Laura won 2 titles there), the BRED adviser called my mother to tell her: “I remember when you made your first loan for Laura to go to the youth party in mainland France…” My parents had to borrow for me to succeed. Even my brothers and sister sometimes gave me their pocket money so that I might travel. Until I was 18, my parents had to finance, write checks and make loans. The best answer for me is to succeed. When I won, I was able to tell my parents, you didn’t do all this for nothing. My number one partner was my mother.
“When I arrived at INSEP, I realized that fencing was racist. »
Laura Flessel
Going to INSEP, at 18, was…
It is an uprooting. My family, my friends, my trainer are in Guadeloupe. And I land in a sanitized universe. I swap the trade winds, the sea, the scents for the red bricks of INSEP… But I know why I’m making this choice. I gave myself the chance to succeed. I had to acclimatize to everything. I had to physically accept the uprooting. We are in 1991. Contacts with Guadeloupe are expensive and limited. There was a line at the phone booths. It was complicated… Sportingly too. I was the eternal replacement, the one who didn’t like, who was scary. I built myself another cocoon. With athletes who knew the high level, a few foil fencers, karatekas, athletes. They explained to me that with my different background, I was dangerous for some. At the time, I was as good at foil as I was at epee. I chose the sword because there was Marlène Hauterville, I knew she would be a friend, an ally. Because at the time, fencing was not mixed… We were only two blacks, Marlène and me. There was no overseas success at the time. When I arrived at INSEP, I realized that fencing was racist. I had to integrate that even the coach might not be for me. I protected myself.
How did you experience this discovery of racism?
I protected myself. We don’t cry in the gym, not in the locker room. I cried in my room. And I never talked regarding it to my mother who was only waiting for one thing: for me to come back. I said to myself: “If you’re ousted, it’s because of your uniqueness, so use it! I gritted my teeth. I found coaches, including Daniel Levavasseur, and a club, Racing Club de France, who bet on me. I moved forward. On the track, I put on the mask and I moved forward. My choices were clear. I wanted to be champion, I wanted to last. Above all, I wanted to change the paradigms of sport. I ticked boxes and moved on.
“At no time did I feel like I was making sacrifices,” says Laura Flessel. LP/Olivier Lejeune
Have you become an athlete on a mission?
At the moment, no. But high level sport made me realize that I was a spokesperson. We had to find the right words at the right time. I understood that I was audible, legitimate. Provided that I do not move away from sporting excellence. I tried to shake things up. Why should we stop at 25 or 30, why mightn’t a woman give birth and resume competition? What place for transgender people? It’s a role that I still have today… and that allowed me to be the woman I am today.
“After my two titles [à Atlanta], there, I can explode. I see my life pass by, the loans my mother has made to me. If she hadn’t put all those pennies on my head, I wouldn’t be here…”
Laura Flessel
Atlanta in 1996, the Games, this slightly crazy dream was four years earlier, and a dream week with the individual and team titles…
I arrived in France in 1991 and until 1995 I mightn’t get into the France team. To be selected, I had to be first in points, that I was indisputable. I managed to be at the Worlds in 1995, I come back with two medals. It’s launched for the Games, it was an essential rehearsal which allowed me, in Atlanta, to be in the game more than in the challenge. When I arrived in Atlanta, I detached myself from the context, from the history of black people in the United States, I saved that for following the competition. I was focused on my two days of competition. My singularity is that I am a descendant of a slave and in the city of Atlanta, it is this story that is there. I said to myself, if, for the first Women’s Epee Games, a black woman wins in this elitist and white sport… It was my inner dream. I was scheduled for D-day, zero hour. Besides, when I win, I smile but I had only fulfilled half of my contract. There remained the second golden hand to ask, that of the team.
Laura Flessel on the Olympic podium in 1996 with Valérie Barlois. AFP/Menahem Kahana
Double Olympic champion, woman, black, in Atlanta, what did you say to yourself?
After the first title, I have emotion, positive energy to start once more on the team. Valérie (Barlois, individual Olympic vice-champion) and I had a medal. Not Sophie (Moreessée-Pichot). He is promised gold. So no party. And we leave. After my two titles, there, I can explode. I see my life pass by, the loans my mother has made to me. If she hadn’t put all those pennies on my head, I wouldn’t be here… To thank her, I bought her house. And then I started from scratch. After my two titles, I said to myself, despite this injustice, this racism, the prejudices, I am here, at the top.
You who had struggled to find a place in the French team, you then became a star, you embodied French fencing!
I wanted to be in the sharing. In my sports family, I then discovered jealousy. We had to be careful. I understood that when you are a champion, you are often alone.
“May these Games be magnificent and leave a deep mark on French society! »
Laura Flessel
You make history in Atlanta and following you last…
I showed that almost anything was possible. Being a mom and a fencer, being competitive at over 30. I needed challenges. I had to innovate, to modernize myself. Especially in the game. To last and win, I had to enrich myself, reinvent myself. I said goodbye when I chose it. In 2012 (at age 40), sixteen years following the first Games. With five Olympic Games (with 5 Olympic medals and in particular six world titles). With a little girl born in 2000, who is 22 today, and a world silver medal in Nîmes four months following her birth… I showed that you might be a mother and a champion!
How has sport made you the woman you are?
Sport reinforced the values instilled by my parents. The sharing. The reflection. The school of sport is the school of life. Knowing how to do, knowing how to be, knowing how to become… The alchemy of what my parents taught me and the high level means that today I can look at myself in the mirror. I have succeeded in my lives. But I don’t want to sit and contemplate, settle for that. I am proud of my sports career, as a mother, proud to have been a standard bearer (in 2012), proud of my time at the Ministry of Sports (2017). Few blacks have been ministers in France. Few of us have done all of this…
Laura Flessel, flag bearer of the French delegation at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, July 27, 2012. AFP / FRANCK FIFE
There is one thing you will not have done: the Games in Paris. How do you view these Games?
I won’t be doing the Games in Paris but I’m lucky to be able to be in the stands. I took part in the Worlds at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2010, I experienced the unique pressure that this puts on my shoulders… We are going to help the young generation who will taste this. For the Games and fencing to be a success at the Grand Palais. It’s going to be grand and majestic. It will be beautiful!
Where will you be?
I will be everywhere! I want to be everywhere! I want to experience these Games as a happy sportswoman, a happy Frenchwoman. May these Games be magnificent and leave a deep mark on French society!
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